Indeed true BUT the op's group doesn't have that much cleave and the dps is slightly on the low side so stacking they would probably run into an overload. But that's just my guess it would probably be slightly easier for them if they did the fight in a controlled environment.

Survival hunter
Lock
Ele shaman
2 warriors
dk

they have some AWESOME cleave. i think the main thing though, will be decreasing the amount of objectives to increase performance. dps is on the low side, i agree and this is the only converning factor. but looking at their members and gear, it seems like with more focus its going to sky rocket. but only trying will tell.

And trust me, having them stacked feels so controlled its ridiculous. Tank healing and taunting becomes a non issue and allows more space of the raid as the bosses are all stationary in 1 spot never moving.

However i do think the OP can kill with either strat if the DPS can pick it up and focus a little more, i just feel for "most" raiders, less mechanics = easier time focusing on remaining ones

However i do think the OP can kill with either strat if the DPS can pick it up and focus a little more, i just feel for "most" raiders, less mechanics = easier time focusing on remaining ones

I totally agree if the DPS can push the proper numbers for gear the fight would go smooth with either method, I also agree that less mechanics does make things easier but then people get lazy and take extra damage from avoidable sources. xP

I totally agree if the DPS can push the proper numbers for gear the fight would go smooth with either method, I also agree that less mechanics does make things easier but then people get lazy and take extra damage from avoidable sources. xP

true, with our gear, we wiped the other night. we lost focus and burned the other adds to much and we killed 3/4 too fast leaving the last 1 empowered for the 40% of his health. not a fun time. mo gear mo problems. haha

wait till the op gets to Heroic Horridon. we have been working on him and let me talk to you about focus, this fight can fry the raid teams after a night of wipes mixed between the 2nd door and the large add on final phase.

1:Go to DBM settings for the fight and turn off everything except for Sand Trap, Frost Bite, Loa Spirits and possibly also Biting Cold or the Frozen Assault.
2:On the pull have Tank 1 pull Malakk over to Sul and start burning Sul while cleaving. Have Tank 2 Interupt Mar'li and drag her a bit further away. After she is far leave her there and bring the tank back to the group.
3:Blow all your cooldowns and heroism to burn him as hard as you can.
4:Once the Empowerment changes to Mar'li, interupt both Sul and Mar'li and drag them togther. Keep cleaving while focusing Sul.
5:Once Empowerment changes to Kazra'jin, interupt Mar'li and drag her away again. Interupt Sul and drag him after Kazra'jin every time he rolls. Sul should die here.
6: Once Sul dies Malakk should die soon after and then Mar'li after that and Kazra'jin after that.

Watch the timer for Sand Trap, it will give you the debuff as soon as he casts it, he has a verbal announcement of the spell.
Make sure you give warning to your group for Frostbite when Malakk is empowered, especially the second time he becomes empowered as its likely your raid may have forgotten.

If you are stacking fast enough for Frostbite, dispelling and moving fast enough for Sand Traps and are killing the Loa Spirits before they reach their targets; then its entirely on your dps to burn hard enough and your tanks to keep the bosses positioned for maximum cleavage.

For positioning purposes, you don't want to interupt Mar'li after she is in position at a distance from the other bosses, doing so will make her run to you to attempt to melee. By the same token you want to keep interupting Sul, but be aware that when Kazra'jin is empowered you will need to move Sul whenever Kaz rolls, meaning you need an interupt available on the same timer as Kaz's movements.
To do this the easiest way is to follow these instructions:

I'm gonna tell you what change the fight for us from a "It's not possible" to a "Wow that's it ?!".

- Raid damage is high is you don't control it, so we put our melee dps (because we only have one) on Sul to interrupt Sand Bolt as much as possible for the whole duration of the fight. He never ever switches to another boss. The raid damage is significantly lowered and Sul dies faster, it's win win.
- BL at pull and burn the f'ing out of Sul, first times we did this (2 healing it btw), Sul went to 55/60% before the switch (pre-nerf).
- Don't dot and don't dps Mar'li at all on pull, we dot Kazra'Jin (the one who rolls and reflect damage) and absolutly don't touch mar'li, that way, it's mar'li who's gonna get Empowered next, and again, it is significantly easier than Kazra'Jin for healers, and dps.

Result is we never ever had Sul empowered. So no adds, no insane damage, no chaos. Sul ends up dying a couple minutes after the pull, when he dies, you basically won. Raid damage is gonna be low, and the fight is 2 or 3 times easier, maybe more.

We did kill the healing/dmg adds from mar'li because well, 4 second of switch on it and he's dead, so why bother.

In my opinion, you should try both ways, but if you can't live through Sul then the real problem isn't solved by stacking up and AoEing. We killed Council first reset, and we just burned the Loa Spirit every time it spawned it doesn't really make the fight that much more complex. You should have a melee full time on Sul for interrupts - the sand bolts might be what's killing your raid. At the start blow Bloodlust and zerg Sul, switch to the Loa Spirit and then remove Malakk's empowerment while your melee sits on Sul. If you have a Disc priest let him also burn Sul with atonement. Two healers is plenty for the rest of the damage. Try to get Sul down before he empowers, which should really be doable with Disc Priest + Melee on him entire fight, and all the hitpoint nerfs they've received.

we do it the way Eihwaz is doing it, killing sul b4 he empowers is really the key to this fight, it is the difference between a walkover fight and an annoying as hell fight. i wouldnt recommend The Oblivion's idea about cleaving, it is great when you have the gear, makes it easier at that gearlvl but i wouldnt do it at the OP's current gearlvl. i would mainly single target nuke sul from the start, but a little cleaving wouldnt hurt. the reason for this is that when you cleave you often tend to have spread you dmg out more, you might be doing 180k dps but if thats on 2-3 targets then its only 60-90k dps, and doing 120k on a single target is a lot better especially on this fight, its about getting Sul down asap, not padding meters and it will be the best option when you're prgressing on council.

Yeh ... I'm the one who is stubborn, having said we've tried both methods, and that our DPS are actually very good for the gear they have. We manage to down a lot of progression bosses purely because of our DPS is high, making certain mechanics work much more in our favour, or allowing us to almost skip certain aspects of the fight entirely ...

I've linked logs of our guild trying it both ways in another thread. Ignoring the add worked far better for us.

Whats the conclusion? Different stuff works for different folks. I'd still advise ignoring the add though. I believe the benefit of cleave far outweighs the minor healing the add does. Feel free to disagree but stating its bad advice is not correct. A lot of people employ this tactic with success.

Edit: Their dps is fine to stack and nuke. Just look at their bear tank all on its lonesome. Top damage is thrash. An ability that hits everything in 8 yards. Hes doing 55k single target. Now move him over to the cleave group and what do you benefit?
- Thrash hits 3 or 4 people depending on where roly poly dude is.
- More vengeance because theres a bit more raid dmg where hes standing for more dps.
- When bosses other than the Priestess are empowering hes hitting them (as well as Sul) leaving more dps time on Sul.

In a 4 1/2 min attempt he did 14.6 mil dmg of which 3.8 is thrash. Thrash would triple if he was stacked making it 11.4 mil dmg changing his total dmg to 22.2mill (82k dps). The same goes for a lot of other players.

Sure, Sul gets healed for 4mill (not 5), deduct the health of the loa add (1.4m) and you are losing 2.4 mill dmg every heal. Cleaves more than make up for that. Target switching costs a GCD too so less time lost. Also, you need to factor in the overkill on a Loa add. That nice ability critting for 500k when the add has 200k left? Wasted damage.

I fail to see in any way shape or form how stacking and cleaving (and ignoring the healing add) isn't far superior in every way.

And we have nowhere near close to insane DPS, nor uberlong progress (11/12 ATM)

Yah but you use one less healer, and Sul barely dies any faster than when you do it the normal way. You also have 1 week more gear. Hardly comparable really. Reality is: both methods work, just depends on your raid group and your DPS, but Sul will not die faster which is what is causing the OP problems.

Yah but you use one less healer, and Sul barely dies any faster than when you do it the normal way. You also have 1 week more gear. Hardly comparable really. Reality is: both methods work, just depends on your raid group and your DPS, but Sul will not die faster which is what is causing the OP problems.

Indeed, we use 1 less healer because there is noone away tanking the priestess that would be out of range of the healers, when i "tanked" the priestess did so on DPS spec, just to interrupt and required 1 healer just so i wouldn't outrange the other 2. Also 1 week of gear and 1 "extra" DPS (as our spriest did quite low dmg) don't get 2 full minutes off a kill if nothing else changes.

ofc i agree both methods work, as i did both of them, but you completely ignore a mechanic, and get overall more DPS.

@Moonlily: Sul should die before being empowered in both tactics, if you manage that the rest of the fight is easymode.

Sul does seem to be quite the pain in the butt, but from what I understood, Sul should die before he gets empowered if you use the cleave tactics?

Even without packing them up he should die without being empowered.

If if remember correctly its always the boss with the highest HP who gets empowered. If you burn Sul at the start and let on person on him the whole fight, his health is always gonna be low and he'll eventually just die.

At the start one tank goes to Sul and one on lady troll. Sul tank taunts or gets MD so he grabs Frost King too. Interrupt Sul and lady troll as much as you can.
You pop everything you have and burn Sul until Frost King is on 65 dark power (55-65). Then you switch to Frost King and nuke him until he loses that dark crap You will probably get some ticks of Dark power - good time to use some raid healing cd's. Don't forget that your lady troll tank needs to taunt of Frost King before other tank has 15 stacks on him. Taunt at 6-10.
Kazra'jin, the rolling maniac, needs every of your dps on him at the start. There is one trick if you have shaman with you. Put all dps in group with shaman and make him use glyphed grounding totem + call of elements ( i think - to reset cd on totem). This will help negate dmg done to yourself. But still, be careful.
When lady troll starts getting dark power don't go for her. Go again to Sul and burn him until she is on 20-25 stacks of it. Then, leave one of your dps on Sul to finish him off before he starts with "DA STORM APPROACHES"
We killed adds who heal boss. They will always go to Sul because he will have least HP of them all. Avoid shit on the floor and you should do this easily.
2 tanks - 2 prot warriors
3 healers - resto shammy, holy pala and monk healer
5 dps - enha shammy, hunter (surv or mm), frost mage, dk and ret pally

Yes Sul should die before his empowerment, as it will make the fight a lot easier. Whatever strategy use doesn't matter as long as it works for your raid group but you should be blowing bloodlust at the start and zerging Sul regardless then change and get rid of Malakk's empowerment. If you have a group with a lot of Cleave damage, the zerg strat is very viable, if you don't just killing the Loa Spirit is viable as well. As I mentioned earlier with a Disc priest with Atonement, and one Melee on Sul the entire fight, you should be able to pull that off. Once Sul is dead the fight is basically won.

My guild doesn't use the cleave strategy and we kill council without many problems. We have our warrior tank (me) and our ret paladin on sul the whole time alternating interrupts on him. We pop hero at the start and before the beef we would have Sul to about 45% before we ever had to switch off him. After Sul is down its relatively easy. The damage is much more controllable. Also I take all the stacks from frost king and become frozen all the time unless he is empowered. We found this easier than taunting off especially when Mar'li is empowered.

Define specific to-do lists for each role. This is pretty important because it breaks the fight into managable little pieces.

Ranged:
Ranged will do the light-blue circle thingy if Malakk is active.
Ranged will slow and kill the add that Mar'li will spawn. (Additional stuns from people with ranged stuns can help)
If no light blue stuff is active ranged stay spread.

Melee:
Since we use two melees we have a 3man (2 melee+tank) kick rotation of sand bolt from Sul all the time we stand near him. You are able to kick every single sand-bolt this way.
One melee stays on Sul the whole fight. Pick your best single-target melee for this one.

Tanks:
If you have a dodge-tank (monk, druid) make sure he is tanking Malakk.
The other tank tanks Sul+Mar'li.
Make yourself a WeakAura setup or sth alike. You need dps! Getting a tank stunned is not allowed. Thus make sure to swap tanks on Malakk at 10-12 stacks.

Fight:
Misdirect Mar'li on the Sul tank. Do not kick her, keep here at the spot she stands at the pull.
Charge Sul and just tank him on his spot. Put Malakk next to Sul.
All out on Sul (including pots+hero) until Malakk has 50 energy. (This is by the time the tanks will swap)
One melee will be on Sul the whole time. The same will be true for tanks if they are positive on threat.
Every 30sec an add will spawn. Ranged prepare and kill it. Use slow/stuns.
Once Malakk is down Mar'li will become active.
Kick Sul and bring both Malakk and Sul next to Mar'li.
Again all out on Sul until 20-30 energy on Mar'li. (Thus everyone does dps on Sul).
Since Mar'li is active melees help on the add.
Once the roll-troll is active pull Sul and Malakk back to the left side. Ranged go on the roll-troll as soon as he switches.
Melees stay in Sul until the roll-troll has 20-30 energy and stuns himself.
Basically Sul should be close to dead by now. Have the two tanks and 1 melee finish him off.
From that on it is piece of cake. Just chill and dps the active target without nuking yourself.

I'm going ot have to go with the stack and avoid the healing add strat to get an easy kill as well! We had allot of trouble when we tried 2 tanking it and the second we swapped to 1 tank and myself going fury offspec it was a kill and has been easy mode since then. With a druid tank this should be pretty easy as dodge = frost debuff falling off if CD's are timed properly and rng is in your favor!

What we do is we have myself and the tank 100% dmging sul and stack all of them on marli. We spread out when sand is about to come up and stack up when kaz is empowered so he rolls right into the middle for mass cleave. The thing you need to do is pop hero at the start leave 1 dedicated dps for sul and just pew pew as hard as possible.

Our ele sham was MIA last nigth and we could not find a decent replacement so we just went in 9 man hoping he would log on. Even with only 9 we were able to kill them easy with this strat. As you can see only 9 of us on for councilhttp://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...?s=3428&e=3828

Our gear is not crazy and we only raid 4 hours a week. However having all the gear in the world wont help unless you min max what you have to it's full potential and learn your rotations etc! With your raid makeup and the crazy amount of aoe dps your team could potentially pop out the stack and kill should be a breeze! Ignore the healy add, have 1 dedicated dps to sul, the rest main target empowered and cleave off them GG!

My guild is probably going to do this fight for the first time this week. I'm going to suggest the "ignore add/cleave" tactic as dealing with mechanics is our weak spot, but one thing I don't think I've read mentioned is whether you guys pull Mar'li away from Frost King after Sul goes down and deal with the add afterwards, or keep them together and let her heal. My thinking is if Mar'li heals the non-shadowed boss unchecked, by the time you get around to dealing with them, they've got 25 mil HP added on and you're stuck with more empowers and lengthening the entire fight.

My guild is probably going to do this fight for the first time this week. I'm going to suggest the "ignore add/cleave" tactic as dealing with mechanics is our weak spot, but one thing I don't think I've read mentioned is whether you guys pull Mar'li away from Frost King after Sul goes down and deal with the add afterwards, or keep them together and let her heal. My thinking is if Mar'li heals the non-shadowed boss unchecked, by the time you get around to dealing with them, they've got 25 mil HP added on and you're stuck with more empowers and lengthening the entire fight.

Thats valid but probably overthinking it. Once Sul dies the fight is over bar the shouting. You can seperate them or keep them together, I personally don't really see it mattering.